Has It Come to This?

By now you've seen it: a video gone viral, "The Most Vicious Taekwon-Do Fight Ever."

All I could think when I saw it is that this is why people don't think that karate works.

Shoot, when I was training in TKD those many years ago and made it almost all the way to black belt, it wasn't worth much, but dadgummit, I did at least get to where I could hit pretty hard and mostly avoid being hit. I did successfully defend myself a few times. Now, it's a laugher for adults.

Nobody's ever going to think of Taekwon-do again without laughing, and it's the people that just had to make a sport out of it that let it happen.

Congratulations, guys, you've destroyed your art.

Takamura Naihanchi

A version of Naihanchi Shodan I haven't seen before. Stumbled on it whilst perusing the newest addition to the blogroll, Sipping Ti.

This interests me. I might work with a couple of these moves and see what I come up with.

Fragmentation and Preservation

Only a few short days ago, Tashi Jim Logue, Taika Seiyu Oyata's senior student, passed from this world. It came as something of a surprise. I knew he'd had cancer. I knew he made trips every so often to a cancer-treatment facility (all of which I assumed were to verify that he was still cancer-free). I knew he'd been in the hospital recently. I did not know, and possibly others did not know, that his death from cancer was so imminent.

The whole thing put me in mind of something that I've thought about from time to time: what will happen to Taika Oyata's karate when the inevitable happens and he, too, passes from this world? It is true that Okinawans are the longest-lived people on the planet, on average, and it is true that Taika Oyata's father lived to a very old age, and it is true that Taika Oyata may well live another twenty years. And yet it is also true that he cannot live forever, and eventually, his organization, the RyuTe Renmei, will be headed by someone else. I am sure that that person will be someone of knowledge and integrity. Every person within the RyuTe Renmei with whom I've talked or corresponded has been very dedicated to Taika and his system. They have all been classy people. I have not met any exceptions.

And yet the good folks in the RyuTe Renmei are not the only people Taika has taught. There are a number of people who have studied under Taika and who are no longer with his organization for one reason or another. Do not ask me why. I know none of them and cannot even begin to speculate on why they left or were shown the door. But there are a number of them, some of whom were promoted to fairly high rank before they left. Now, it is true that the art as Taika has taught it has changed somewhat over the years. My own teacher thinks that this is because Taika is still analyzing the art, as he was taught to do by his teachers, still splitting pages within the book, as my teacher might put it, and also because Taika has revealed more of the art as his students have demonstrated themselves capable of understanding and handling it. This should not surprise anyone who has seen a person learn--well, anything, even simple cooking. It is pointless to try to teach a person how to make puff pastry if he has not yet demonstrated the ability to make egg noodles. So it is true that a person who left Taika's organization years ago, despite having attained high rank, would not be teaching exactly the same thing that is being taught in the RyuTe Renmei right now.

And yet, nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances under which they left, and regardless of how long ago they left, each of these people can legitimately claim to have been taught by Taika Oyata and to have been promoted to high rank. And that is nothing to sneeze at! I well remember having first been introduced to what was then called Ryukyu Kempo, back in the eighties (I trained for a while, then dropped out for many years, in case you were wondering. I have not been training continuously since the eighties!). I had been training in Taekwon-do for some little time; my next promotion would have been to black belt. I had trained under two seventh-dans, one sixth-dan, and two third-dans. Not one of those people showed me material as advanced as what my teacher showed me then. Not ONE. Not even close. Nor have I seen the like amongst the local Japanese Goju Ryu crowd (though I have much respect for them and their organization and follow them closely online). In other words, a person might have left Taika's organization fifteen years ago and "missed out" on some of the information he's revealed over the last several years, and he would still, in my opinion, be teaching material vastly better than most people in most "karate" classes around the country are getting.

And that is where I start remembering Yip Man. You may not know about him (I'm sure many do!). He was a very famous kung fu teacher in Hong Kong, a remarkable fellow who'd learned Wing Chun back on mainland China before managing to escape to Hong Kong. Yip Man's kung fu was widely known to be extremely street-effective. He taught a number of people over the years, and last I heard, I believe that there were a minimum of three people claiming to have been his "closed-door" disciple, the only inheritor of the true art of Wing Chun kung fu! And the thing is, each of these people is apparently good enough that you might well believe their claims!

I'm sure there are other cases like this. As a matter of fact, I know there are. Look at the history of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu in Japan. Apparently, that system didn't survive intact past the death of its founder. If I understand correctly, one of the founder's sons went on to teach the Shogun's family, and another stayed behind in the family village, with the one son eventually deciding that the other son had changed some elements of their father's system, and founding his own sub-system, the Owari Yagyu Shinkage Ryu (Don't quote me on this, I may have the details wrong!). And it went downhill from there!

Look at the history of aikido since Ueshiba Morihei's death.

Come to think of it, since there is a sizeable Japanese Goju Ryu crowd 'round here, look at Goju Ryu! How many different sorts of Goju Ryu can you name? Off the top of my head, there is Goju Ryu as taught by the Jundokan, by Morio Higaonna, Seikichi Toguchi, Peter Urban's Goju USA, Lou Angel's Tenshi Goju, "Chinese" Goju, Gogen Yamaguchi's Goju-Kai, and who knows what else!

History and human nature being what they are, then, I find myself wondering how many of Taika's former students will someday be claiming to have been shown the real, true art of karate, of Ryukyu Kempo, to have been Taika's secret disciple. Will any of them have the cheek to claim that that they have it right and the RyuTe Renmei has it wrong? It sounds absurd, but--again, human nature being what it is--I would bet you dollars to donuts that that is exactly what happens.

I'd love to be able to say that I know how to prevent this, but I haven't a clue. And it will be a darn shame when it happens.

Tashi Logue's death also put me in mind of the vital necessity of teaching what you know whilst you have the chance. You never know just how much time you have. Tashi Logue certainly set the example in this case. He worked hard to share his knowledge.

The reality is that each of these systems--I am talking about the older, more classical martial systems--is, at any given time, but one generation away from extinction (the same has often been noted of Christianity, by the way). It is not possible to learn it all from a book or video and there are never enough people practicing them. They are not the same as systems like Taekwon-do or Shotokan or Japanese Goju Ryu or Aikido or Judo or Kendo, which have millions of practitioners throughout the world. I would not be at all surprised to find that there are fewer than five thousand RyuTe students worldwide. The majority of those, of course, are not yet qualified to be teachers. While I do not know, have never tried to make a count, it would not at all surprise me if the depressing reality is that there are really very few members of the Renmei ranked fourth dan or above. Or perhaps there is a high percentage of people ranked at that level, but a high percentage of a small number is still a small number.

This is very sad in a way, yet it is also completely amazing that there is a RyuTe Renmei at all. You can put it down to divine providence or sheer dumb luck as you prefer, but if I understand what I've read and been told correctly, the content Taika Oyata learned from his first two teachers might well have perished with them had he not encountered them. I have certainly not seen anything quite like what my own teacher has shown me anywhere else. That is significant. Over the decades, I have acquired what has to be, I think, as solid a martial-arts library as can be had in English. I have works on aikido, on jujutsu, on judo, on karate, on pressure points, acupuncture, and chin na. I have watched way too many hours of video online. And I am serious, as serious as a heart attack, when I say that what Taika Oyata has revealed, as passed on to me by my own teacher, is different. Not that you can't find similar techniques in those other martial arts. More than once my teacher has said things like, "This is how they do it in aikido. We just do this little (fill in the blank) to (fill in the blank)." There are techniques that look a lot like what we do in RyuTe, but in RyuTe there is always something, something that changes the results of the technique from the "oh-crap-that-hurts" or the "oh-crap-where-did-my-balance-go?" elicited by other systems to the "OHCRAPWHERETHE****DIDTHATCOMEFROM?" that you get with RyuTe. It is just not like anything else, and it was almost lost. As my own teacher has told me repeatedly, Taika's teachers were not, per se, teachers, they were upper-class fighting men, nobles. As far as I can tell from what I've read and been told, Taika Oyata was not simply their premier student, he was their only student, and had he not been there at the right time, huge chunks of the real Okinawan martial traditions would simply have vanished, lost to time. More, the world would not have even known it! The world would have gone right on assuming that what they were being shown in the dojo of modern karate systems was all that there was (as a matter of fact, I have read some fairly amusing stuff fairly obviously premised on the idea that modern karate is all that there is--that is, there are still a pretty fair number of people who simply will not admit to themselves that there is more to the kata or to vital point striking or to karate's grappling than Funakoshi revealed in Karate-Do Kyohan.)

But because Taika Oyata was there, and because he, in turn, has been willing to teach, those centuries-old skills are largely in the hands of middle-class Americans. I sometimes wonder if people fully appreciate what a huge leap he has made in choosing to entrust us with this art. I hope that we do not fail him--and in a larger sense, our neighbors--by failing to pass it on. I think he has certainly done everything humanly possible to make sure that the knowledge is not altogether lost, even if no one else of his capabilities arises for a long time to come. I hope also that everyone realizes that preserving that body of knowledge is going to have to be something of a team effort--have to be, I say, and I am quite sure I am not the first person to have thought along these lines! You see, as far as I know, the weapons knowledge--nunchaku, sai, bo, jo, and so forth--is split up, kind of as though there are, shall we say, "subject matter experts." My own teacher knows the jo very well, and also can teach sai--but although he has nunchaku and tanbo in the weapons racks, he does not know the kata for those weapons and wouldn't venture teaching more than the most basic movements. I am given to understand that this situation is not uncommon--that there are people that know nunchaku pretty well, but not chizikunbo, or vice versa, and so on.

This body of martial knowledge doesn't reside in one man--other than Taika Oyata--but in a body of men, in the RyuTe Renmei and especially in Shin Shu Ho. Part of me wonders if Taika Oyata didn't set it up that way deliberately, so that they would have to stay united.

I won't be in a position to teach much of anything for another couple of years. At that time, I hope to begin teaching on a modest scale, under my own teacher's direction. I particularly hope to spread RyuTe amongst the local homeschooling community. They--homeschoolers and RyuTe--seem natural fits for one another. And I hope that in a modest way, I can thereby contribute to keeping this system alive amongst people who truly need it. And I hope that when the inevitable occurs, I hope that it can be said of me that I played my part in keeping this knowledge available for others.

More Thoughts on Taekwon-do, RyuTe, Ed Parker, American Kenpo an' Stuff

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Beware: this post rambles. You have been warned.

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I suppose, for the sake of people not familiar with this blog--that would be the overwhelming majority of people in the world--people that are just "driving by," so to speak, maybe looking for information on American Kenpo, I ought to briefly recap my experience in martial arts, just so you'll have an idea of where I'm coming from.

I first started martial arts with a class at age of fourteen, something called "Polynesian-Chinese Karate." I knew nothing at the time, had absolutely no idea that this was an offspring of Hawaii's melting pot of martial arts (from what I understand, it's more or less a meld of kenpo and Hawaiian lua, if you wanted to know). It didn't matter that I knew nothing. I was only there for a couple of classes, and the only memory I have is of a sparring session, wherein the other kid complained to the instructor, "He hits hard!"

Then I wound up in a local taekwon-do school, I suppose you could say by default. You see, although Japanese Goju-Ryu was huge in Northeastern Oklahoma at the time, and by huge, I mean it had been pretty much the only game in town for quite a while--OK, you're wondering: Lou Angel brought it to town, having learned it under Peter Urban. Lou later traveled to Japan and studied directly under Gogen Yamaguchi, and was awarded higher dan ranks whilst he was there. Lou taught in Tulsa for quite a while, promoted a pretty fair number of black belts, a number of whom still teach--or their students teach--around the area today. Some of these guys were fairly well known back in the day, like Billy Briscoe, widely reputed as having "the fastest hands in the West."

Another guy that came up in Lou's organization was Gary Boyd, who was my teacher's first teacher. Gary was a special case. According to my teacher, he never tested for black belt. It seems that Gary's job afforded him the opportunity for considerable travel, and it was his custom to visit dojos wherever he went and ask to train. He collected kata, and he loved free-sparring (at which he must have been, given the stuff I've seen from my own teacher, darn near brilliant). At any rate, as a brown belt, he wound up in Gosei Yamaguchi's dojo--yes, Gogen Yamaguchi's son--and beat all the black belts present in free sparring, whereupon Yamaguchi Sensei handed him a black belt, saying, "Nobody beats my black belts but a black belt, so here--you're a black belt!"

Some story, eh? You would think it inevitable that a would-be karate student in Oklahoma would wind up in Goju-Ryu, but as it happens, shortly before I started training in martial arts, the Goju community in Northeast Oklahoma was absolutely rocked by a series of events that led to Lou Angel leaving the state, never, as far as I know, to return. I have heard the story and will not go into it. Others who know it better can tell it on their blogs if they feel so inclined.

I knew nothing of what was going on, but I did know, and so did my mom (she was a single parent at the time), that the hot place to go for karate training in Tulsa at the time was a school run by a Korean immigrant who later touted himself as one of the world's top taekwon-do "coaches"--and he did indeed coach at least one competitor who, if I recall correctly, medalled in the Olympics. He was also the first teacher of a man who later achieved world-wide fame in the kickboxing ring (I am not exaggerating--world-wide fame) and several other people who did quite well over about a four-state area in tournament fighting competitions.

Taekwon-do as it was taught then, and as taught by this man, was different from much of what I have seen from taekwon-do people over the last fifteen years or so. Most of what I have seen over the last fifteen years or so has been nothing but beat-crap-out-of-each-other-with-wildly-unrealistic-for-the-street-kicks stuff, so completely removed from its karate roots (Okay, I know some taekwon-do guy out there is climbing out of his skin at that comment, so let me digress: No, taekwon-do is not the modern-day version of a centuries-old Korean warrior art. It is the result of a fusion between Japanese karate and some indigenous Korean kicks. Live with it.) as to be completely unrecognizable. Taekwon-do back then was (and still is, in some organizations) very hard to distinguish from Shotokan karate. Even the forms--kata, hyung, poomse, whatever you want to call them--were just modifications of the Shotokan kata.

I got up to blue belt--the rank just below brown--with this man, and if nothing else, I learned how to hit pretty darn hard and improved my coordination, which, at the commencement of my training was absolute crap, quite a bit. Then, for reasons I just honestly don't recall in detail, I dropped out. I started and stopped a couple of times over the next few years, spending time with one of my first TKD teacher's students, then with the karate club at the university I was attending (where I made it to brown belt) and then with a gentleman from Korea who also ran a donut shop. I was working at Arby's at the time, and couldn't afford diddly, so I managed a special deal with this guy. When I wasn't working, during the daylight hours, I would just come and sit and answer the phone. In return--free lessons!

The school wasn't very old. I soon made it to first gup (ikkyu in Japanese) and I was the senior student. And it was just about that time that I really began to understand that something wasn't quite right with taekwon-do.

There I was, within spitting distance of getting my black belt, and one day, when my instructor and I were alone, I was sparring with him, and I suddenly realized that I was manhandling him--that he might outpoint me, but if I really chose to press it, it would have been him getting hurt, not me. Now, it is true that I was no midget (about five-ten and about 180 pounds at the time) and he was a little Korean guy, but he was a sixth-degree black belt and I couldn't help but think that if, not even being a black belt, I could "handle" a sixth-degree black belt, then maybe taekwon-do was never going to be, for me, the ferocious fighting art that I had always heard that karate was. You see, I had had my suspicions for a long time. I had read Richard Kim's book, Funakoshi's autobiography, and several other books, and I knew that karate was supposed to be bad, that genuine experts were supposed to be able to achieve remarkable effects, but the reality is that I had never seen any such things and had been training and waiting a long time so as to reach a skill level where karate's "badness," if you will, would show up.

It's not that I believed taekwon-do was useless, mind you. I had used it--simple reverse punches to the solar plexus--several times to put a stop to attempted bullying in high school. I was quite capable of manhandling the other students in my instructor's school. And I had this abiding conviction that there was something there, for I found it impossible to believe that people would preserve kata for so very long if there was nothing to them. I had heard the instructions about "chambers" and "blocks," and, knowing no better, accepted them, but with a grain of salt.

I mean, some of that stuff was just impossible to believe. You're going to "chamber" for a block on the right side of your body by first withdrawing both hands to the left side? Seriously? But I didn't believe the old masters were stupid, either.

I knew there had to be more.

Well, eventually, I quit Arby's and joined the Marine Corps Reserve. During our last week in boot camp, we were allowed to visit the PX, and on the cover of BLACK BELT magazine, which I bought, was a man named Seiyu Oyata. The article was about the hidden meanings of kata, and you can imagine that I was interested. At last, here was someone saying that my suspicions were right--the kata motions weren't useless, but they weren't what I had been taught, either.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got back home and, through sheer dumb luck, found that someone was actually teaching Taika Oyata's system (known then as "Ryukyu Kempo," now as "RyuTe") in my city. This was amazing. I joined the class and was there regularly for some few months, happy as a clam.

Then I got married, and, as those of you who are married know, things get complicated. I dropped out of the class and didn't return for a long time. So long, in fact, that I had an almost-grown son. Life had grown somewhat more manageable, and he had an interest, and at first I thought, "Well, we'll take a look at the Shotokan class at First Baptist, it's probably the best we can do, we'll order some of Taika Oyata's tapes and see if we can't apply some of what we see to what we do in Shotokan." But then I thought, "Well, who knows? Maybe my old teacher is still teaching."

At first I couldn't find him. He certainly wasn't teaching publicly. I finally found a stray blogospheric reference to him, and then--duh!--decided to look him up in the phone book. He had since become a very sick man, but he remembered me, and after talking with me and my son, agreed to take us on as private students in his home. We have been with him now for some little time, and it has been amazing. He's about to turn 63, and is an oxygen patient, not very big, not strong at all, and he can make the techniques work on me and my son. He is living proof that real Okinawan karate works, that it's skill and knowledge that rule, not size and strength. He validates everything he says by his ability to make the techniques work on healthier, younger, larger, stronger people.

So, there I am. Not as "brief" as I initially intended it to be, but I warned you that the post rambled!

Now, about American Kenpo. Obviously I do not practice the system and am never likely to, but it has intrigued me for a while, as have other "American" martial arts, like Danzan-Ryu jujutsu, Budoshin jujutsu, Small-Circle jujutsu, Vee-jitsu, Kombido, Kajukenbo, and so forth. I mean, I can see how these things arise...

...pardon me while I digress for a moment. I have to tell a story about a local kenpo teacher, one I heard from my own teacher.

You'll recall that I said Japanese Goju-Ryu was once the game in town around here, only to lose first place to taekwon-do. However, there was a kenpo school here for a while, a franchised one, and the teacher was a man of considerable ability who remains quite well known around these parts, although, as far as I know, his teaching is limited to a handful of students in the Tahlequah area.

My teacher told me that this man once attended the local state fair and got drunk whilst he was there. The local sheriff's department was providing security and made their intentions to take him in known, and he said fine; he wasn't going to resist, he would go with them, but not to touch him--he couldn't stand to be touched. Now, I know that makes no sense at all, but you have to bear in mind that the man was drunk. Well, the deputies had already put out a call for backup, for the man was known to them, and as deputy number four arrived on the scene, overhearing the conversation, it climaxed with deputies one, two, and three trying to take the kenpo teacher down from behind in order to cuff him. In a trice, the kenpo teacher had downed all three deputies and turned to the fourth one, who, not being a fool, announced that he wouldn't touch the kenpo teacher, just, please, sir, would you take these and cuff yourself?

In court, the first three deputies naturally wanted the kenpo teacher to serve time for resisting arrest, battery, and so forth, but when deputy number four took the stand, he confirmed everything the kenpo teacher had said and the judge tossed those charges, apparently on the grounds that deputies one, two, and three were idiots! The kenpo teacher was found guilty of being drunk and disorderly and that, apparently, was it.

My teacher had a job in city government at the time and deputy number four, in addition to his duties as a deputy, was one of my teacher's employees, and that is how he heard the story. Hope you enjoyed it.

As I was saying, I can see how these things arise, especially given my experience with taekwon-do. I mean, you get some training in something, you can tell something's there, but you can also tell you haven't quite got the whole picture. So you start seeking out knowledge from other sources, hoping to fill in the gaps in your "picture." How many people have you known who have achieved black belts in karate, and then judo, and then aikido? A lot of people are satisfied to leave it right there, apparently content with the idea that karate really is mostly block-punch-kick and you have to get grappling from elsewhere. Some of the arts I mentioned above really don't amount to much more than collections of techniques drawn from karate and judo and, maybe, arnis. I don't blame the founders of those arts. What would you do if you came home from military service with a black belt in Shotokan and your neighbor came home with a black belt in judo, and you went to the same church? Or something like that?

But American Kenpo seems different to me, and I think it is different principally because of Ed Parker.

Now, there is more than one theory of how American Kenpo came to be. It may very well be that some people came here to read this post just to see what this no-name blogger had to say about its history. I am not going to get into an argument about American Kenpo's history with anyone, so if you disagree with me, that is fine, you are not the first and you will not be the last. I may well be wrong and if I am, I will still go home and sleep well.

Having said that, for those of you who haven't heard it, the story in many kenpo circles is that James Mitose was born in Hawaii and was then sent back as a lad to Japan for training in his ancestral religion and martial art, that art being a variety of kenpo. He then came back to Hawaii and taught a number of students.

Mitose eventually left Hawaii. My understanding is that he was eventually arrested on the mainland, charged with being an accomplice to murder, and died in prison. That much seems to be fairly certain. However, I don't believe that story about James Mitose bringing an ancestral Japanese martial art to Hawaii at all. You can poke about the web for people making arguments for it and arguments against it, and in my opinion, those making arguments against it have much the better of the argument.

What I think happened is this: Mitose picked up a smattering of martial arts from only-God-knows where and combined it with what he had seen of Okinawan karate. If memory serves, both Choki Motobu and Chojun Miyagi made visits to Hawaii within Mitose's lifetime. I think (though I cannot prove) that Mitose took what he had learned and turned it into a temporary means of making a living. You may wonder how he was able to do this, probably not being what we think of as a genuine karate master, and all I can tell you is that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! Back when I was in taekwon-do and defending myself with a simple reverse punch, the people on the receiving end of that punch, simple as it was, certainly thought that I knew what I was talking about.

I don't think Mitose had to be a real "master" for people to be impressed with him.

One of Mitose's students was William K.S. Chow, who had apparently learned some kung fu--what kind? Heck if I know--from his father. "Thunderbolt" Chow took what he had learned from Mitose and blended it with his father's kung fu and passed the result on to, among others, Ed Parker. If nothing else, it was rough stuff and the people behind it had a vital--vital--interest in being able to stay alive on the street.

Parker took the art to the mainland and, as far as I can tell, kept "cooking" it. You can see a real progression in Parker's kenpo from his first books to his last. Although I am convinced that he added to what he learned from Chow (I have read at least one source that strongly suggested he spent some time training in Hung Gar kung fu), it does not appear to me that he just added techniques willy-nilly to his system. It appears to me that he really attempted to understand what was going on anatomically and in terms of kinesiology, and he made a serious effort to systematize what he had learned and come up with. Parker, as far as I can tell, accepted and absorbed what he had an opportunity to learn, but he didn't blindly accept it. He kept asking himself, "Why does it work? Can it be improved? Can I prove that it works in real life? Is it the best way to do it?" His life vis-a-vis martial arts appears to have been a continual process of absorbing, refining, and improving whatever he could find, from whatever sources were willing to part with it. It intrigues me because it seems a peculiarly American approach to martial arts, and because it seems to me that it is the same approach that the Okinawan masters of karate took . If Ed Parker's American Kenpo isn't the equal of classical Okinawan karate (specifically RyuTe), it's not his fault. The Okinawan masters carried out their research over the course of centuries, and through Taika Seiyu Oyata, it is still going on. Ed Parker had only his own lifetime and during it, he created an art that while, again, not the equal of classical Okinawan karate, is sure as **** better than most of the "karoddy" (to borrow a term from Openhand) that you find around this country today.

At least when it's taught well. That is an issue. Not every kenpo instructor out there is a good one.

Oh, well. Just some meandering thoughts from a middle-aged man without any particular claim to expertise. Hope I didn't bore you too much.

My Brain is Full

I went to one of Taika Seiyu Oyata's seminars over the weekend. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but could not escape the feeling throughout the seminar that I was an utterly uncoordinated idiot, quite unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.

All I was trying to do was learn a new exercise. You wouldn't think it would be that hard. I think I've got it, that is, I think I can execute the movements in the correct order. Haltingly and at a glacial pace, perhaps, but I think I can do it. Perhaps in a week I won't look like Frankenstein's monster whilst I do it.

This seems to be one of the benefits to training in RyuTe. You WILL, via some very considerable challenges to your physical coordination, forge new neural pathways. As some consider that sort of thing one of the means by which you avoid age-related mental deterioration, that is a good thing.

A note: if you, as a practitioner of some other martial art, had happened to be in a roomful of RyuTe yudansha on Friday night, and had you known no better, it is my bet that there is no way on God's green earth you would have identified what they were doing as Okinawan karate. It is increasingly hard for me to read people's commentaries on "karate" without thinking to myself, "But there is no way that you've seen 'karate,' at least 'karate' as it was 150 years ago." I'm very serious. What you are seeing as "karate" and what Taika Oyata is teaching his students are different. The surface appearance may be similar, but the underlying reality is very different indeed.

Self-Defense: It's Not Just a Freakin' Hobby

More than a few times, I have read people pontificating on why they study martial arts. Some will tell you that they study to cope with stress, for physical fitness, for the cultural aspects, for the mental/spiritual effects, and so forth. Those are all valid reasons, too, and I don't wish to denigrate them, and yet...

It's amazing to me how many people study martial arts and are apparently utterly unconcerned (or else outright delusional--as in the case of people who study "martial arts" but spend most of their time on point sparring and so forth) about their applicability in real-world self-defense situations. It's like they just don't see a need to prepare themselves for conflict. It's like they think martial arts is a hobby, like tap or jazz dance, or ballet, or golf.

It's not. At least, it's not intended to be.

Let me suggest to you, if it hasn't occurred to you already, that you live in a world where people will cheerfully threaten you over your political views, as described by the father of one young lady, emphasis mine:

Kristen wrote this editorial (No thanks, Mrs. Obama ..) for her high school newspaper in February of this year. After the article was published, she underwent attacks from African-American students, parents, local church groups, and members of the community. She was called a racist, threatened with a knife, attacked verbally and physically in the hallways at school, and her vehicle tires were slashed in the school parking lot. Members of some local minority organizations even met to discuss how to retaliate against her and a boycott of her school newspaper was launched.

If you're interested, I believe that this is the text of article she wrote.

You live in a world where, through no fault of your own, you may, like a co-worker of mine, wind up the object of some drug-addled, bi-polar weirdo's obsession.

You live in a world where someday, they may be coming for you...

and you may find it vitally necessary to be able to break the grips of people attempting to take you somewhere you don't want to go, or to put a man on the ground with one technique.

And so many of you just don't seem to care. Frankly, you people freak me out.

Another YouTube Naihanchi Tour

In this one, I put together some of the video dealing with Naihanchi applications, instead of just performance.

Now, a caveat: I am not going to comment on the appropriateness, effectiveness, or silliness--whatever the case may be--of any set of these applications. Nor am I going to say anything like, "This is similar to what we do in RyuTe." Even if there are surface appearances of similarity between some of the applications in these videos and some of the applications I have seen in RyuTe, there are likely to be minor differences, and those minor differences are often more critical than you might think at first glance. For example--although this doesn't have anything to do per se with Naihanchi--I once kept trying to duplicate a movement I'd seen Taika do on one of his tapes, a movement drawn from Pinan Shodan. I just couldn't reliably get the movement to work on my eldest son, who is noticeably stronger than I am. So I asked my teacher about it and when he saw what I was doing, he immediately said, "Oh, you're missing the nerve strike."

Nerve strike? I didn't see any nerve strike on the tape. Well, turns out it's a subtle-looking, scraping sort of thing that doesn't leap out at you when you see it. You have to be looking for it--but once you know how to do it, the movement works very nicely.

At any rate, I don't want to give anyone the impression that if they get good at some of these applications, they have somehow absorbed some RyuTe into their repertoire.

I would say that the applications shown here are not even close to being exhaustive. I have certainly not seen every possible application of the Naihanchi movements, let alone practiced them. Doing so would be the work of years.

Shoot, this isn't even an exhaustive selection of the bunkai videos on this kata. There were lots more to look at, but I was pretty sure that most people wouldn't even play this many.

Y'know, Choki Motobu was said to know only a handful of kata at most. I seem to recall reading that at least one writer said he knew only Naihanchi. Well, if true, it's no drawback. The reality is that Naihanchi Shodan alone contains enough material that the mastery thereof might well occupy a lifetime.

I know that a lot of you don't believe that, or at least are having a hard time accepting it. I don't blame you. All you see is the 45 seconds or so of movement. You haven't seen different timings, you haven't seen what my instructor called "Naihanchi turnaround," you haven't seen how the stepping motions work, the incredible number of uses to which those "double blocks" can be put, and so forth.

Oh well. I won't lose any sleep over your refusal to believe it. In the meantime, enjoy the clips!















Shoot, let's stop there. There are actually many more clips available on YouTube. If I had linked to them all, you would be here all day...

A YouTube Tour of Naihanchi Shodan

Well, as the estimable Dr. Parker has been dwelling on Naihanchi, and as Openhand has offered a few words on the subject,, it's kind of on my mind. I thought that I would proffer up a bit of a tour as to the kata, at least in terms of various performances.

First, I should note that if there is up-to-date video anywhere on the web of any of the Naihanchi kata as they are being taught in RyuTe, I am unaware of it. Anyone seriously interested in learning about Naihanchi would do well, I think, to order the videos from the RyuTe Renmei. They will, as far as I know, sell them to anyone. You should be aware that the applications shown in those videos only scratch the surface. On the other hand, they should give you at least a little insight. You certainly won't find the money wasted.

That being said, here is video of (so I gather) a student of a former student of Taika Oyata performing Naihanchi Shodan.


There are, of course, about a bajillion different Shorin Ryu organizations out there. Here is a performance by Onaga Michiko:


Chosin Chibana:


Matsubayashi Ryu:


Shito Ryu:


Shotokan (Funakoshi Gichin):


Shotokan (Kanazawa Hirokazu):


Shorinji Ryu:


Wado Ryu:


Kyokushinkai:


Lastly, I have to include a version of Naihanchi Sandan, as this is, according to my own teacher, my best kata. I have to admit that I like it a lot. This version, of course, is not quite like the RyuTe version, but it should give you the flavor of the thing.


Well, that wasn't actually "lastly." I do have one additional thought for you. It's out of my own head and no one else should be blamed for it.

You know those cross-body "punches" you saw in the videos? Well, they can be things other than punches, of course, but the reality is that you can, in fact, smack the crap out of someone with one of those. I have hit the makiwara with them more than a few times, and boy howdy! Does it go!

What's more interesting yet is that if I change stances and hit the makiwara from any other position after having done it in horse stance, I find that the power in my punches is noticeably enhanced. I really do think that Naihanchi helps you learn to subtly recruit punching power from disparate parts of the body.

Just my two cents, of course.

Openhand on MMA

This was just too entertaining not to quote. I have made a couple of small edits for language. Not that I haven't heard it all before--I've been in the Corps, y'know--but there are some that come here that would just as soon avoid it.

I keep reading Blog's, that “tip-toe” around the whole MMA issue, and frankly I'm sick of it. These individual's are skilled “sports” figures. They are by no means skilled combatants. If you watch one of these matches, note that every one of them, is in prime physical condition. They're young, strong and full of ---- and vinegar. ALL, notable attributes for a “sporting” contestant. I would defy you to take any of them, at age 45 or older, and see if anything (that they presently do in this MMA ----) even works for them at that time. When you can present to me, multiple 70+ year old practitioner’s of any of this MMA (or related) trash, that's even able to do it (much less force any of it to work) then maybe I'll consider bestowing any respect towards it. The difference being (between that tripe, and what I practice) is that I have an example to aspire towards. Granted, he isn't 70 year's old (he's freakin' 83 year's old!), but I would definitely feel more confident knowing what he knows, compared to anything that these MMA/ground-fighting/what-ever mook’s are selling.

Truthfully, most people that I know have hardly any interest in martial arts at all, so they basically don't listen to me ramble on about it, but once in a while, very rarely, someone will ask me why I insist that RyuTe is different from what they have come to know as "karate."

I always point first to myself (48 years old, about 200 pounds, of which only about 15 is excess, in tolerably decent shape, that is, resting pulse rate usually about 66 bpm, blood pressure good) and then to my instructor (62 years old, probably no more than 160 pounds, weak from the ongoing therapy to completely eliminate a cancer, on oxygen, only about 30 percent lung capacity) and note that, yes, he can make the techniques work on me. No hay problemo. You do not need to be Hoss Cartwright to make this system work.

If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will.

The 83-year-old to whom Openhand refers, if you didn't already know, is Taika Seiyu Oyata.

Inflated Ideas About Your Martial Art?

I really wanted to include some video here...

See, I was in Oklahoma City today, and coming out of one of my clients' driveways, I saw a vehicle that had a web address written across the back window, a web address for a martial arts club.

I am so trying to be circumspect and non-offensive here...

At any rate, I recognized the name of the system. I've read a little bit about it and the man who started teaching it in this country. Every time I've read anything about it, the websites touting it focused on its "brutality," "extreme efficiency," and so forth. It is not a "sport," or even a "martial art," they say, it is a "combat art." It is "well-rounded," not like Judo, which is just throwing, or Karate, which is just punching and kicking (so they say on these sites).

Well, naturally, I was curious, and I visited the OKC site. Same boilerplate material, so I went to YouTube, and sure enough, I found video from that very school. Some demonstrative material, and some material from someone's brown belt test.

Now, I am not trying to be hypercritical, nor do I want to make it sound as though I'm really in a position to judge things. God knows I'm no grandmaster...

BUT...

I have seen a thing or two...

What I saw on those videos, frankly, was nothing that you wouldn't see in a lot of Americanized JuJutsu classes, or some American Kenpo classes. Not that this is necessarily bad. I'm just saying that I didn't see anything in those videos that would justify all the hype as regards the alleged exceptional brutality and efficiency of the system under discussion.

And one other thing: these people were clearly play-acting, that is, the attackers were visibly cooperating with the defender, to the point where I am confident that many of the techniques might well not have worked had the "attacker" been serious.

Now, you do want cooperation when you are starting to learn a technique. But eventually, at least sometimes, you want to see if you can actually make your techniques work on a resisting opponent, don't you? You do have to be careful. Some of these techniques can dislocate or break joints and so forth, and I'm not advocating that you backfist someone in the temple to make sure it works. But you don't want to always have your partner totally cooperating, either. That seems like a sure-fire way to acquire an inflated idea of your technique's effectiveness.

To sum up: most of us like to believe we practice the roughest, toughest form of self-defense known to mankind, or, if we don't already practice something, that's the stuff we'd like to seek out, right? But just because someone tells you that they practice badmammajamma-jutsu, the most "brutal, efficient, combat art" in the universe, don't necessarily make it so. You just might want to bring your capacity for objective thought to this subject.

Openhand on Tuite

More than a few times lately--well, shoot, over the years--I've read comments and blogposts about tuite and kyusho from people that are--well, they're just interesting, I'll put it that way. People will tell you to rap someone in the temple with a backfist--a technique involving a striking surface about the size of a fifty-cent piece impacting a target about the size of a fifty-cent piece--whilst simultaneously deriding nerve strikes (I am not making this up. I read a piece by one of the highest-ranking Isshin Ryu masters in North America doing this very thing.) They'll tell you that tuite is too complex, too much of a "fancy technique," to work in combat, under stressful conditions.

God knows I don't claim to be an expert on either kyusho or tuite, but I am pretty sure that anyone telling you such things isn't all that good at either one. Tuite is not very complex, not really, at least what I have been shown. It is simply the practical application of anatomy and body mechanics in a defensive situation. You are drilling the motions, over and over and over, in kata. You do not, under stress, have to rummage through your memory to find appropriate techniques any more than you have to rummage through your memory for appropriate driving maneuvers when you are trying to avoid an accident. Just like striking techniques, tuite kind of "pops out" of you when appropriate, if you are doing the practice. And if you are seeking techniques that do not require that you practice them in order for them to be readily effective for you, I would suggest that you are kind of wasting your time practicing martial arts in the first place.

Tuite is darned effective, once it becomes natural to you. I keep going back to the example of my own instructor, but that's because he's the perfect illustration. Doggone it, the man's a fairly smallish, ill, weak, oxygen patient of sixty-two years age, and he can quickly and easily overpower either me or my son with tuite. It doesn't require muscle. It can slam you to the deck in a heartbeat.

All I'll say about nerve strikes here is that in my limited experience, as you become more familiar with them, the vulnerable areas become easier to find and hit. I have learned painfully from my son that eventually, it becomes darn hard to miss those nerves. Dadgummit, the booger hardly ever misses my nerves...

All of which is to suggest that if you are interested in the subject, you visit this post by Openhand. It's a short education in the subject.

Don't Just Assume Stupidity

I was explaining--what was I explaining? Kinda hard to put it into words, I guess--my general approach to life, the universe, and everything to a co-worker a week or so ago.

"My general thinking is that individual people and what they do may be stupid," I said, "but in general, the people as a group are wise, and you can usually count on this: if things have been done a certain way for a long, long time, there's a reason. I may not know what that reason is, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason. And it's true that sometimes it turns out there isn't a reason, or the reason has been lost to the passage of time, or the reason may have been relevant a thousand years ago, but isn't anymore. But for the most part, people as a body are not stupid, and you're well-advised to at least consider the old ways thoroughly before discarding them. There may be more to them than you think."

I wouldn't have remembered that conversation, probably, but a blogpost concerning a particular martial arts technique that one noted individual had dramatically changed for his system reminded me of it. Y'see, I'd given, as an example of my thinking, my personal experience with taekwon-do and RyuTe.

I made it almost all the way to shodan--first-degree black belt--in taekwon-do. That was a fairly long time ago, and there were still plenty of taekwon-do teachers around whose teaching was not exclusively geared to sporting competitions. Not that I didn't learn tournament sparring--I did--but I also learned the old ITF hyung that were based on the Okinawan kata, and, overall, I'd say I learned how to hit pretty hard, not just how to score points.

Those old hyung always puzzled me. Why, I wondered, were we being told to "chamber" both hands like so before executing a double punch (or whatever)? Why were there "salutes" in the hyung? I never really got answers to those questions, and many like them, but I never doubted for an instant that there were perfectly good reasons we did those things. I just didn't know what the reasons were.

To me, it came down to a relatively simple question: were the people who made those hyung, those kata, stupid? If I wasn't prepared to assume from the get-go that they were stupid or ignorant--and of course, I had been told that the forms originated with masters long ago--then I had to assume that those not-stupid, not-ignorant people had reasons for what they did.

When I wound up with the opportunity to study RyuTe (then traveling under the name "Ryukyu Kempo"), I found the reasons. The movements did indeed have meanings. Stacked hands, like in a "chamber," meant something. There were effective techniques connected with such motions and positions. The old masters weren't dolts. Every "block," every strike, every motion and position of the legs, forward and reverse, has meaning and applications.

The fact that I didn't know they were there when I was studying taekwon-do didn't mean they weren't there. The fact that it takes more than a handful of repetitions to get good at them doesn't mean they aren't quick and effective.

Every so often, I'm glad I didn't decide, before I began to understand techniques a little better (I will readily admit that I still have much to learn), to just discard or modify the old ways and go on to something different in the name of modernity. Without wishing to seem critical, it seems to me that rather a lot of people have done that, not just in martial arts, but as regards life in general. The "noted individual" to whom I obliquely referred a moment ago may well have been a case in point, in that the dramatic change he made had a certain surface-level logic to it, but when he made it, he discarded countless applications that can only be correctly performed when the technique is performed--you guessed it!--the old way. Whether he understood this and chose to make the change in the name of simplifying things for his American students, or whether he didn't understand it and just thought the old masters must not have quite "gotten it," I don't know.

I just know I do my best not to make that mistake, again, not just in martial arts, but as regards life in general. The old ways have survived for a reason. It might be worth your time to determine what that reason is before discarding them.

---

Just my two cents. No disrespect intended. Not naming names is deliberate, as the idea here is to illustrate a point, not to make anyone feel bad or anything.

---

Hard to Argue With That...

Doug Giles writeth:

I have a dream!

A dream where instead of reading about a cute college coed left dead and naked out in a vacant lot or bloated and floating in a river, the story reads: “dead jackass found double-tapped and dead on the curb as his soul wings its way to Hades—all because he messed with the wrong mama.”

A dream where it’s normal for girls to know Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts. A dream where they can shoot golf ball sized groups with their .38 at 15 feet. A dream where they have a BS detector that’s so sensitive they can read people and environments with godlike clarity within a nanosecond.

Personally, I'd recommend RyuTe instead of jujutsu or MMA, but that's a picayune criticism. I'm all for as many women as possible being armed, trained, and ready to defend themselves.

Wise Words on Self-Defense

I should note at the outset that I do not agree with Mr. Redmond about everything in the universe. More than once he has said that he thinks--well, as he put it in this post:

Karate is not self-defense. Karate is a tactical dueling system only.

He has frequently given me the impression that he really does think that Shotokan (the system he practices) sums up what "karate" is, and that it is less a real-world self-defense system than a sporting contest with a historical connection to mano-a-mano macho contests. I, on the other hand, enter a practice session with an acute focus on the problem of keeping my pale tuchus alive and unharmed in the event of a violent assault, and think that karate--specifically RyuTe--is an excellent "life protection" art. Be that as it may, I rather liked what he had to say in this post. Herewith, a short quote:

I avoid violence. I, like most others who have practiced fighting arts or have been in the military, am well aware that when violence starts, so does chaos. And in the chaos, anything can happen. No matter which of you is the master and which is the fool, either one can step on a banana peel and end up injured severely or dead.

Those who engage in violence when ANY other option is available roll the dice that they will not be killed. Good luck to those people. I prefer to de-escalate and avoid violence unless I judge it to be absolutely necessary.

Self-defense is not about winning fights – it is about using strategy and decision making to avoid them completely.

More on Oklahoma Martial Arts Frauds

So help me, one of the things in life that just "gets" me is how easily otherwise skeptical people will fall, when it comes to seeking out martial arts instruction, for the most pathetic lines of BS imaginable. They may have figured out that certain television evangelists are frauds, they may have figured out that Tibetan Go-whatsis-berry juice isn't really the fountain of eternal youth, and so forth, but let someone claim that they created the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, or have teacher's level certification in Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do, or have multiple tenth-degree black belts, or to have mastered multiple martial arts systems by the age of twenty-five, and does their bullsnort detector go off? Do they even bother to google the supposed "master" to check out his claims?

God forbid!

We have a few martial arts frauds in Oklahoma. I will not name names. At least one of them is notoriously litigious. But to reiterate what I have said before: if you are not fairly experienced in martial arts--and I am not claiming to be an expert myself, mind you--the odds are **** good that, confronted with someone who is a little bit better than you are and who can spew a good line of swill, you won't be able to tell the difference. In other words, you, Mr. Joe Off-the-Street-Smuckatelli, who's never gotten past yellow or green belt in anything, just by looking and watching, you will not be able to tell the difference between someone who's gotten fairly good at some material that he learned by ordering DVDs on kenpo and pressure points and someone who's actually been practicing in person under established instructors for twenty years. More often than you might think, you will not be able to tell the difference between different systems of martial arts. If I put them all in the same uniforms, like as not, you wouldn't be able to tell the Shotokan guy from the Japanese Goju Ryu guy from the ITF Taekwon-do guy. You will not be able to tell the diffence between somebody who is really good at Ed Parker's Kenpo and someone who's picked up a little kenpo from videotapes and added it to his taekwon-do repertoire.

And people do lie about their martial arts backgrounds. There are people who've made up whole systems based on God-knows-what, and are passing themselves off as "masters."

How the heck do you find out?

Well, for a start, you might take the obvious step of googling them. If you google the name of a "master" of a purportedly old system of martial arts, and you can't find out who his instructor was, or who his instructor was, and so forth, that's usually a red flag. In the older systems, everybody knows his "lineage." That is, they can all tell you, "I took from so-and-so, who took from so-and-so, who took from so-and-so."

If you google his supposedly classical martial arts system and find that all the results point directly or indirectly back to him, well, that doesn't seem terribly likely, now does it?

If you google the guy's name and find out that the folks at Bullshido have made him a running joke, that's not a good sign.

If the guy claims to have invented the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, you might, for the love of all sanity, google "who created the marine corps martial arts program."

Exactly why the heck people would make stuff like this up, I'm not sure. Yes, there's a little money in it. If you've got fifteen dupes students, each coughing up fifty-sixty-seventy simoleons a month for whatever it is that you're teaching, sure, that's pretty good pocket change. It just seems to me that if you're going to tell whoppers of that magnitude, you ought to be getting more than that sort of chump change out of it.

Look, there is good martial arts instruction to be had in Oklahoma. There are two RyuTe instructors, though one of them (mine), due to ill health, is not likely to take any more students. There are actually several pretty good Japanese Goju Ryu teachers, who can trace their lineage very clearly right back to Yamaguchi Gogen. There are some Okinawan Goju Ryu instructors. There are some very legitimate instructors of Ed Parker's Kenpo. There are a whole cluster of good Aikido clubs.

Every single one of them can be checked out on the web and their claims investigated. If you're interested in martial arts, for your own sake, CHECK THEM OUT!

End of rant.

The Weird Thing About Kata

It wasn't that many years ago that you could very easily find people in the martial arts world completely dismissing the practice of kata. A lot of people thought it was stupid.

I never thought kata was stupid, not even when I had no real clue what I was doing with it. You see, I took it for granted that the people who created and preserved the kata weren't idiots. I had enough common sense, just barely, to realize that there had to be a purpose to those things we called "chambers." Had to be. Only an idiot would take such a position without a darn good reason, so I figured there had to be a reason. I just didn't know what it was.

The other day, over at Okinawan Fighting Art: Isshin Ryu, Mr. James published, making reference in the process to something that Shotokan's Rob Redmond wrote, Elmar Schmeisser's rules for interpreting kata. There are, of course, other sets of rules for interpreting kata. There are the rules that Toguchi Seikichi said that Miyagi Chojun gave him (read this), which the authors of The Way of Kata expound in even more detail. Then there is the approach that Javier Martinez takes in Okinawan Karate, The Secret Art of Tuite. (This seems to be out of print. Amusingly, someone has priced the only used copy that Amazon lists at almost a thousand simoleons. It was an interesting book, but I guarantee you, it ain't worth that much. You could buy the whole set of Taika Seiyu Oyata's tapes for half that, and you could buy everything that Yang Jwing-Ming has written about chin na for less than a couple hundred, I'm sure.

On the other hand, I do own a copy that's in pretty good shape. I'll let it go for a comparative pittance--say, five hundred bucks. Anybody up for that?) Bruce Clayton seems to take another approach in Shotokan's Secret. The RyuTe Renmei, under Taika Seiyu Oyata's guidance and leadership, uses yet another approach. It will surprise no one that I am most impressed with RyuTe's approach. It consistently produces an effect known in the blogosphere as either headdesk or facepalm, that is, when you, if you come to RyuTe from a different system, as I did, and you see some of the RyuTe applications for all those movements you've wondered about for years, they are so intuitively obvious that you immediately want to slap yourself silly for not having seen it before.

But you know what's weird? It seems to me that all of the interpretive approaches I mentioned above (and I'm sure that I've left some out) yield at least some usable techniques. This is in spite of the fact that sometimes those methods seem dramatically different from one another. One method I've read insists that the movements of the kata be followed in order; that method produces at least some usable techniques. Another method considers the movements as though they are linked in modules. Here is what you do if the opponent grabs your wrist. Then, if he does this, you do that. And if that, then this. That method also produces at least some usable techniques. They all produce at least some usable techniques.

It seems to me that no matter what approach you take to interpreting the kata, if you do the creators and preservers of the kata this one favor, that of assuming that they weren't complete fools and really look hard for useful techniques, the kata will do you the favor of yielding up at least some of its secrets to you.

Mercy in the Melee: Another Answer to "What is Karate?"

My blogospheric friend, Dr. Pat Parker--cardiac rehab guy, martial artist, notorious Presbyterian, and jalapeno-grower extraordinaire--occasionally posts video clips and or commentary answering the question, "What is karate?" They are always informative and interesting and have inspired me to take a stab at answering the question in my own way.

What is karate? The simplest answer is that, as far as my reading is concerned (I don't pretend to be an expert, or to have actually been to Okinawa, or to speak the language, etc., etc., etc.), it is the unarmed portion of the warrior-class martial arts of the Ryukyu archipelago, though it is not really easy to totally separate it from the weapons arts of that area, and in my not-so-expert opinion, they really should be considered together.

On a technical level, karate is a multifaceted art, comprised of a blend of indigenous Okinawan technique influenced by the continuous importation and reimportation of Chinese martial arts. Okinawan ti and tegumi seem to have influenced it, and it soaked up what the famous Chinese families of Kuninda brought to Okinawa, and what visiting Chinese emissaries and merchants brought--Monk Fist and Tiger Fist and White Crane, and probably others. As far as I can tell--and God knows this isn't authoritative, it is just my opinion--some of its footwork and certain other elements may have been influenced by the sword handling of the Japanese.

It makes brilliant use of the mechanics of human perception, that is--by the closest analogy I can make--like stage magic, it takes advantage of the way people naturally perceive and react to movement, so that often, the person on the receiving end of a technique never really sees it coming. Nerve techniques are everywhere, in the strikes, locks, and throws. All of this was "cooked," if you will, into a state of extreme efficiency by the pressures of dealing with the Okinawan political situation in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Obviously, this body of knowledge is better preserved in some modern karate organizations than others. Some, including some of the largest and most famous, seemed, until recently, to have been completely unaware that their formal exercises, or kata, contained much in the way of joint locks, for example, let alone nerve techniques. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I am convinced that this body of knowledge is best preserved in RyuTe.

But that is not all there is to karate. Karate, certainly as it has been taught to me in RyuTe, and generally throughout Okinawa, to judge from what I have heard and read, is also characterized by a profound respect for the value of human life--not only the defender's life, not only the lives of those being defended, but also the attacker's life. It is true that karate has its share of potentially lethal and disabling techniques, but killing and crippling opponents is not its goal. Its goal is to protect life. Ultimately, it is an expression of mercy--mercy shown to your own family, in the act of going home alive and unharmed, that you may continue to contribut to their well-being and development; mercy toward the defenseless, whom you may end up protecting, that they may do likewise; and mercy to attackers, that they might live to see the error of their ways and to embrace a new way of living.

The goal in karate is to protect human life wherever possible. It is mercy in conflict, mercy in the arena, mercy in the melee.

That's what karate is.

Just Some Interesting Google Results for Oklahoma Martial Arts

Some time back, on a lark, I googled Oklahoma Shorei-kan (Shorei-kan being the name of Seikichi Toguchi's organization, and me just happening to be wondering about it) just to see if anything came up. Much to my surprise, there were hits in addition to Haggerty's Karate in Oklahoma City, which I already knew about. Here they are, if you're interested in Okinawan Goju Ryu, as opposed to Japanese Goju Ryu, which, thanks to Lou Angel's long-ago dominance in this state, is by far the most well-known flavor.

The difference between Okinawan Goju Ryu and Japanese Goju Ryu? Practitioners of these arts will no doubt differ with me, but if I had to pin down the differences, I'd say that the most notable one is that Japanese Goju Ryu doesn't make anywhere near the use of hojo undo that Okinawan Goju Ryu does. Other than that, they seem like substantially the same art to me, at least on the surface. But that's just my opinion. I don't practice either one. At any rate, here they are:

Stillwater Goju Ryu in Stillwater, Oklahoma

Shorei-Kan Goju-Ryu Karate in Enid, Oklahoma

There are multiple links to various Japanese Goju Ryu sites in my sidebar, if you're interested.

Would you believe that you can find Shorin Ryu, too? There's a club, mostly Baptist, from what I gather, in Oklahoma City.

Much to my shock, there appears to be a genuine American Kenpo school or club here in Tulsa. There used to be more of a kenpo presence here in Tulsa. A long time ago, we had a "Tracy's Karate" (Jim and Al Tracy were some of Ed Parker's most noted students) franchise here, and I am sure that there are a few of the black belts from that old school still practicing in their garages or something. Also, Roger Greene, if I'm not mistaken, teaches somewhere near Tahlequah. But if you're interested in Ed Parker's American Kenpo, that's what The Tulsa Academy of American Kenpo Karate claims to teach. They also claim to teach it with something of a "zen" perspective--whatever that means. In my experience, with most folks, it doesn't mean much! But you may want to probe the subject in more detail before enrolling.

As I've said elsewhere, I have a lot of respect for American Kenpo, if taught decently. Whatever you might think of its origins, and they are in hot, hot dispute, American Kenpo as Ed Parker left it seems to have become a pretty decent self-defense oriented system. If RyuTe instruction were not available to me (Thank God it is!), I would certainly consider American Kenpo.

I must also say one other thing about American Kenpo: there are a lot of charlatans, including one here in Tulsa, claiming high ranks in kenpo, or to have created their own systems (sometimes multiple systems!), out there. Be very suspicious when looking into kenpo. That's all I'm sayin'.

Speaking of RyuTe, there are, in fact, two instructors under whom you can learn RyuTe in Oklahoma. One of them, mine, is not in the best of health, and he has already told me that unless someone already in the association moves into the area, or someone who manages to demonstrate to him that he is likely to remain in the system and take it seriously asks to be taught, he is not likely to take any more students. The other gentleman is, as far as I know, taking students. If you're interested, you can probably contact him through the organization's website.

There are more martial arts-related links in my sidebar. Some of those organizations are in Oklahoma. Please be aware, also, that there are more than a few people teaching "martial arts" in Oklahoma that are so absolutely full of bovine by-products that it boggles the mind.

Sanchin and Blood Pressure

I was discussing Sanchin (I should note that Sanchin is not part of the RyuTe curriculum) with someone the other night, and heard the "sanchin-makes-the-blood-pressure-spike" story.

I have read/heard this story many times. I think it is given credence by a pretty fair number of Okinawan Goju Ryu practitioners having given up the ghost relatively early in life. It has a superficial appearance of validity.

Goju Ryu emphasizes Sanchin, and a lot of Okinawan Goju practitioners have died young, sometimes of something heart-related. Makes sense, and yet...

I never heard the same thing about Japanese Goju Ryu practitioners. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but my understanding is that Yamaguchi Gogen lived to a ripe old age. As far as I know, Yamaguchi Gosei hasn't croaked yet. I haven't heard of any problems with Sanchin-related blood pressure problems from the local Goju crowd.

And, too, Isshin Ryu uses Sanchin. There's a famous photo of Arsenio Advincula practicing it. I swear, he looks like his muscles are going to bust right through his skin.

I believe he's in his seventies and doing just fine. Could be wrong about his age, but I'm fairly sure.

Chito Ryu uses Sanchin, too. Never heard any stories about Chito Ryu practitioners dropping dead from blood pressure problems.

Morio Higaonna still seems to be going strong. Toguchi Seikichi was an old man when he died. And...is Eichi Miyazato still living? I'm not sure. He's an old man if he is...

In short...

I've never been convinced that Sanchin is a problem for most folks. Not that it would matter a whole lot to me, personally, as at least at this point, I do not practice the kata. But I might sometime. My instructor still practices some Goju Ryu kata, amongst them Tensho (although, due to his deteriorating health, he does it without the restricted breathing, the "lion's breath," as he calls it), and I rather get the feeling that he would teach me Tensho if I asked him, but that I had better learn Sanchin first. So it might happen. But I digress...

The more I look into it, the more I can't help but notice (Goju folks will have to forgive me!) that a lot of those famous Goju Ryu practitioners may have been fearsomely strong, but they were also blessed with...

...well...

...fearsomely big bellies...

...they're finding out that belly fat is a killer, you know...

At any rate, if you poke around the net a little bit, you find things like this quote from a forum ("Carl" speaking), emphasis mine:

Your question, "Is Sanchin dangerous to practice?" is a very good question. This argument has been going on for a long time. It really all depends on who you talk to. I once performed an experiment where I wore a blood pressure cuff while doing pushups and while performing Sanchin. Well, guess what. My blood pressure was higher while performing pushups than while performing Sanchin kata. And believe me, I wasn't holding back while performing Sanchin kata. People say that the oldtimers died young from performing Sanchin kata. I think this is hogwash. Remember, they simply didn't have the health care and nutrition we have today.

and this small study--yes, there's actually been a study!--which I think pretty much settles the question.

Sanchin Kata was performed in the Isshin-ryu Karate method for the purpose of the study. Isshin-ryu is a combination of Shorin-ryu and Goju-ryu Karate style created by Master Tatsuo Shimabuku. Each participant of the study performed Sanchin Kata on a real time EKG (Electrocardiographs), similar to a stress test, for the duration of the Kata. Blood pressure and pulse checks were performed both manually and mechanically at 30 second intervals during the performance of Sanchin, as well as at one minute intervals for five minutes both pre and post exercise. Prior to commencing the study it was determined that a physiological baseline should be established as a basis for comparison. This was done by having each participant of the study receive an EKG and blood pressure check while at rest, and while squatting 70% of their own body weight for three sets of 12-15 repetitions.

The 1997 Sanchin study performed and compared in the manner described above showed no significant physiological functioning difference between performing squats and performing Sanchin Kata. According to Dr. Seufert,

Based on this study I don't find the practice of Sanchin to be any better or worse for someone than the performance of any other strenuous activity, but, as with any exercise program, participants should consult their own physician prior to starting. Results showed an increase in both blood pressure and pulse in both exercises, however the increase was almost identical. Their where times during the performance of Sanchin that the EKG was unreadable due to muscular tension, but overall it was within normal limits for every participant involved.

And there you pretty much have it: Yes, Sanchin raises the blood pressure--about the same way that lifting weights does. If you're not going to have problems lifting weights, you're probably not going to have problems doing Sanchin. As this Dr. Seufert suggested, you might want to check with your doctor. And of course, you will want to get decent instruction as to how to do the kata. I have seen people--or, more accurately, seen video of people--doing it in such a way that merely watching them raised my blood pressure.

Just sayin'.

Mike Clarke of Goju Ryu Saith:

I once fought on the streets, for about three years all together, and in that time I was arrested several times and found guilty of inflicting everything from G.B.H. (Grievous Bodily Harm) to Wounding on those I fought with. I was stabbed a number of times, and eventually ended up behind bars as a guest of Her Majesty the Queen. I'd like to know how the street-smart seminar instructors of today managed to avoid collecting a similar criminal record for violence, you know, when they were field testing the skills they are now teaching.

Putting my utter stupidity and my teenage years behind me I have, over the past 36 years of karate training...

There's a whole lot more to the post, of course, but this part intrigued me for a few reasons.

First, there are not that many people who will just bald-facedly admit to having a past like that. Usually people just make excuses, if they will admit to it at all.

I'm tellin' ya, I wish I had my teen and young adult years to live over again. I wasn't a convicted criminal, mind you, but I made so many idiotic mistakes and committed so many sins, mostly because I was convinced my brainpower gave me a better guide to what I should be doing than the people who were trying to counsel me, people who represented the distillation of generations of experience. I was wrong; they were right. And because I didn't listen, I have experienced only a fraction of the earning power I should have commanded, and that has made life much harder on my wife and children than it need have been.

Now, don't go cryin' for us. We don't starve. I'm just sayin' I could have made things a lot easier on us if only I'd listened, that's all.

Second, he did actually turn things around. I have no idea whether or not he is a Christian--usually I associate turn-arounds like that with Christianity--but really, there are not that many people who start out in life like that who turn things around. He did. Very impressive.

Third, think about what he's telling you. Here's a guy who was indisputably one of those "wily, crafty, desperate, willing-to-do-anything-to-you streetfighters," against the likes of which people are constantly telling you that traditional martial arts are useless--useless!--and what does he choose to train in?

Traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu, that's what.

Think he might have reason to believe that it'd work in the sorts of altercations which he's had in the past?

And, by the by, if you find yourself interested in Goju Ryu as a result of Mr. Clarke's writings, you can fairly easily find instruction in Japanese Goju Ryu in Oklahoma. If you're interested, there are some links in my sidebar.